As you can see Methane is most definitely part of level 1, so Level 2 is only adding Arid and Tundra.



Yes Blockade Runners does allow trade routes with Eternal war so that is an option.



As I understood Mineral Memory, it only showed you where the strategic resources are and didn't actually do anything for you. However, after trying it I can see that you do still get the bonus from the Efficient Stock trait. It doesn't allow building the Strategical Rock exploit on that planet, you still have to research the resource for that.

Hi guys. I too am puzzled by harmony. I love the concept of rock-monsters as much as the next guy, but they need work! Buff them plz and I will love to play them. For now I do for fun, l'm trying to figure them out, but it's a bit of a pita



Problems I see right now:

Lack of HEROES is a huge disadvantage, you simply have not compensated for this! They should start with +50% FIS imo at least.

Lack of negative picks to chose from HUGE disadvantage. Harmony should start with more picks! More than half the pick tree is blocked out for them, the "free" picks having to do with heroes are not available at all... It's a disaster.

Choice between growth and science should not be made at the empire level, it is too hard to manage even for pros, forget about the casual base.



I'm going to continue playing around with them, see how it goes, because I love the concept

Astax wrote:
Hi guys. I too am puzzled by harmony. I love the concept of rock-monsters as much as the next guy, but they need work! Buff them plz and I will love to play them. For now I do for fun, l'm trying to figure them out, but it's a bit of a pita



Problems I see right now:

Lack of HEROES is a huge disadvantage, you simply have not compensated for this! They should start with +50% FIS imo at least.

Lack of negative picks to chose from HUGE disadvantage. Harmony should start with more picks! More than half the pick tree is blocked out for them, the "free" picks having to do with heroes are not available at all... It's a disaster.

Choice between growth and science should not be made at the empire level, it is too hard to manage even for pros, forget about the casual base.



I'm going to continue playing around with them, see how it goes, because I love the concept

You are definitely right by saying that they are kinda weak in early game. But built the right way, they can be quite powerful (more powerful than many default race configurations)

The thing to realize is that they are weak early, when hero are most productive and they didn't get the strategic resources yet, so build them around good early action.



1. Tolerance. They are about 5 times as suitable for this as sowers, mostly because they are not affected by happiness. Just get those yummy helium and methane (and barrens and lavas of course). They can be amazing early game despite -25%. (20I -25% =15I each!) Each planet gives you 5 food and 5 industry (no -25% as far as I see), not so great as heros, but helps a lot in early game. Also, the 1st level unique food building you get give you food per pop for ALL planets.

2. Cloning. 2 levels is good enough, since you don't need food bonus for Class I much. Help you slightly when you get all those barrens etc. And your starting planet is tundra!

3. Some military bonus. +command or -cost all help, and synergize well because rocks don't pay upkeep. I prefer -cost, so that I can react quicker to enemy configuration. (No retrofit hurts, sometimes more than heros)



For negative picks, consider always war, ascetism (I'm not quite sure about this), random bad anomaly (most don't hurt that bad), deep roots (ownership? for rocks?), spray whatever (works for everyone)



As for sliders... After playing a while I must say food/science slider is kinda easier than tax sliders. You have to realize that the tax slider is a complicated dust vs FIS tradeoff. It is only easy if you only leave it where you break even on dust or reach some happiness threshold. Consider all things dust can do, it is actually a super complex slider really. Food vs Science is actually direct. Growing? Food. Not growing? Science. You only manage it much in early game (although it can be more micromanagement if you also switch planetary exploits for maximum efficiency). Just do some attempt to say, build colony ship/colony base on all systems simultaneously. (full science for couple turns)

Yes I realize the potential for late game. However, making it to late-game is the problem Thus far I have been an order of magnitude behind all the other races I play during the first 50 turns. This is simply suicidal.



I am working on different combinations, and tolerant is next on my to do. I appretiate the tips, I shall put it to good use. I figured that Tolerant would be the best way to go and just focus on population growth. If I can double population over standard empires I can lead early game.

Remember to leverage the science boost you get from potential arctic/barren/helium in your home system (or anywhere) to quickly get harmonize planet for that much needed +50% FIS (after colonizing spree and when you are going into serious pop growth mode). It is still a fight to survive first round enemy invasions on harder difficulties, good luck!

You will probably be interested in these threads.



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10558-are-the-harmony-still-broken-what-s-your-strategy



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10548-school-me-harmony-post-arugia



Thuvian and Nosferatiel have some good posts that I would recommend reading. My current build for Harmony is a little bit different than stated in that first thread but mostly the same. I dropped fragile hulls and added 1 level of spray and pray and 1 level of optimal defense instead. I can't remember if there are any other changes.



The Harmony is doable single player, even at endless difficulty. Multiplayer on the other hand is a lot harder, and I would say they are horribly disadvantaged against human players. I love the idea behind them and their ships, but without more balanced and consistent map generation, they are very much a wildcard in terms of being viable or not in multiplayer. I'm leaning towards not. I think my Sheredyn race would beat them every time in multiplayer.

Well I had first MP game. I guess I wasn't facing most potent players but I made it to turn 50 and pulled ahead, survived rushes from both sides of the hollowed out disk, and began to push back. Then the host dc.







Surprisingly enough -research is actually not a bad choice for them. As the -30% doesn't apply to research generated by your production, which will be bulk of your research. And the 15 points you get can be useful elsewhere. Efficient Stock is a must, it easily offsets the dust penalty. With these traits I was pretty solid at building up my empire, and I had ability to spit out ships to counter enemies. Research is a bit tricky, but is easily doable if you do not research half the tech tree. Pretty much neglected all +research buildings and anything to do with commerce/trade. Wormhole travel is doable by turn 15 if you need (On Fast speed), but I usually get it few turns later.



With slow travel make sure you redesign the colony ship to add engine, this makes it speed 4, and the engine is very tiny for Harmony on that hull.

Astax wrote:
Well I had first MP game. I guess I wasn't facing most potent players but I made it to turn 50 and pulled ahead, survived rushes from both sides of the hollowed out disk, and began to push back. Then the host dc.







Surprisingly enough -research is actually not a bad choice for them. As the -30% doesn't apply to research generated by your production, which will be bulk of your research. And the 15 points you get can be useful elsewhere. Efficient Stock is a must, it easily offsets the dust penalty. With these traits I was pretty solid at building up my empire, and I had ability to spit out ships to counter enemies. Research is a bit tricky, but is easily doable if you do not research half the tech tree. Pretty much neglected all +research buildings and anything to do with commerce/trade. Wormhole travel is doable by turn 15 if you need (On Fast speed), but I usually get it few turns later.



With slow travel make sure you redesign the colony ship to add engine, this makes it speed 4, and the engine is very tiny for Harmony on that hull.

Here's my build based off yours. As you can see I dropped Mineral Memory because it's just a waste of points which with the 1 point you have left over is enough to drop slow travelers. Then I dropped Strategically Resourceful, because you will end up with more than enough for monopolies with needing the normal 4 per that you don't need to spend these 7 points to drop it to 3 per. This allows adding N-Way Fusion with 3 points left over. N-Way is more for immediately building Heavy Isotope Refineries than knowing where the titanium is. Then by adding Feeble Warriors 2 you gain another 5 points bringing the total available to 8, which allows taking the 3rd level of Builders for -30% improvement cost instead of only -20% with Builders 2.



Cloning 1 at only 5 points adds food per pop to all but Tundra, Arid, Terran, Ocean and Jungle. Cloning 2 for 10 points only increases the planets with +1 food per pop to include Tundra and Arid. Cloning 3 for another 10 points adds the top tier planets. In other words with Cloning 1 for just 5 points you now have at least some food per pop on all planet types before any improvements are built.



So from the build I posted above, you could drop to just Cloning 1 to free up 20 points. This allows for Deadly Weapons 2 +24% min & max damage on all weapons (10 points) and Knowledge Gathering 2 +40 science per CP destroyed (10 points). Or you could add Kitchen Chemists +1 science per pop (20 points).

if you are going for eternal war then knowledge gathering and deadly weapons 2 is probably a lot more practical than kitchen chemists.

Monthar wrote:


Cloning 1 at only 5 points adds food per pop to all but Tundra, Arid, Terran, Ocean and Jungle. Cloning 2 for 10 points only increases the planets with +1 food per pop to include Tundra and Arid. Cloning 3 for another 10 points adds the top tier planets. In other words with Cloning 1 for just 5 points you now have at least some food per pop on all planet types before any improvements are built.

Pretty sure Cloning 1 only adds to class V (gas giants & asteroids) while Cloning 2 adds all the way to class II (lava, barren, arctic, tundra for useful harmony planets). Class V, though extremely good for Harmony, only account for like 16% of planets, and you have to minus hydrogen from that. I may be wrong those and it also adds to lava and barren, that's still only like 40% of planets. Plus, you start with Tundra, and would be unlikely to research colony tech early beyond tundra & arctic.



Thus, I would argue that Cloning 2 is the best position for this trait, similar to the position in quoted thread.

...I dropped Mineral Memory because it's just a waste of points...

Why do you say that?



If you are going Eternal War, have you considered Blockade Runners?

Cloning 1 - Desert, Arctic, Lava, Barren, Asteroids, Hydrogen, Helium, Methane,

Cloning 2 - Desert, Arctic, Lava, Barren, Asteroids, Hydrogen, Helium, Methane, + Arid, Tundra

Cloning 3 - All Planets, + Jungle, Ocean, Terran





Straight from EmpireTraitDescriptor.xml.



(edited to fix accuracy)

Apheirox wrote:


If they did remove the key faction feature like that they might as well delete the faction completely.

So you may feel it is an important Harmony concept for them to have this penalty, however, please note from my suggestion I am not removing any race "feature". I'm suggesting replacing the disharmony penalty with a "harmony bonus" where the "reduce the negatives" from the research tree are replaced with fids increases instead on "clean" systems.



Why?



Well 2 issues;

First, I think the disharmony bonus was a developer attempt to make the Harmony race more like the other races, in this case to add a substitute for the over expansion penalty other races receive. However, The Harmony are not like other races and I feel this kind of forcing actually took away from their unique racial identity.

Second, The Harmony's play style may be changed, but as it is they are not big on expansion, as such the "disharmony" penalty isn't really a focal point of the race at all. This means that even more of the tech tree is useless to them as these techs can safely be set aside for almost anything else in the tree.



I felt my suggestion dealt with these 2 issues, and having put in many hours trying to get The Harmony to work at all, I definitely feel they need heavy penalty reduction.

Monthar wrote:
As you can see Methane is most definitely part of level 1, so Level 2 is only adding Arid and Tundra.



Yes Blockade Runners does allow trade routes with Eternal war so that is an option.



As I understood Mineral Memory, it only showed you where the strategic resources are and didn't actually do anything for you. However, after trying it I can see that you do still get the bonus from the Efficient Stock trait. It doesn't allow building the Strategical Rock exploit on that planet, you still have to research the resource for that.

Nope no bonus from Efficient Stock u also have to research the resource for that.

The problem with Trade and the Harmony is that you have to research a tech (inter species HR which is 4000 points) to change dust to food. With the harmony you are already struggling to stay technologically viable without adding on to that must have progression. With Eternal War you will never see unknown systems without physically getting a ship there which to establish trade. It's just not as beneficial as say Amoeba + Block Breakers where all you have to do is meet another race and you establish trade with as many systems as you have trade routes for and they have systems for.

Sovereign wrote:
Nope no bonus from Efficient Stock u also have to research th resource for that.

Then why was I getting the bonus with mineral memory revealing strategics in systems that didn't have titanium when titanium was the only strategic I had researched?



Edit: NM, I figured it out. It was because one of my systems had titanium hooked up and since all systems gain the benefit from the resource, all systems were getting the bonus not just the system it was in. Therefore, I stand by my original statement that Mineral Memory is a waste of points and should never be taken.

Apparently, I'm mostly useless today.

• I corrected my post about Cloning.
• I had confused Mineral Memory (Reveal all Strategic Resources) with Efficient Stock (+1% FIS per Strategic Resource).
  
  

However, something useful did come from this. Cloning 2 gives you +1 food per population for Tundra and Arid. Arid planets (2/2/6/2)are useless to Harmony (for a long time) because they generate mainly Dust. Tundra planets (2/6/2/2) are pretty good for the industry, plus you start on one. I'm not sure that Cloning 2 is worth it anymore just to get the bonus for Tundra planets.

I still colonize all planets unless it so happens that there are like 6 deserts... Most disharmony penalty is offset by strategic stock, so it's a wash. And then you get to lower your disarmony through research, and eventually you can lava transform anyway.

Never transform a desert to lava, lava has less pop than desert. You'd be better off just building colony ships to remove some of the pop from those desert worlds if you don't have another planet in system to shift them to.

Thanks for checking, I also agree that Cloning 1 is good enough then!

10pt can be better spent on percentage food/science/build cost.

Monthar wrote:
Never transform a desert to lava, lava has less pop than desert. You'd be better off just building colony ships to remove some of the pop from those desert worlds if you don't have another planet in system to shift them to.

Desert is really bad for Harmony even if they have more pop. Base of 1+1+9*0.66=8 base production per pop per desert after purification, Lava=1+12=13 per pop. Also you have no additional bonus from most buildings due to deserts being dust focused, you are more likely looking at 8+2(from exploit)+1(science)+1(food) vs 13+4(exploit)+5(ind)+1(sci)+1(food) or 12 vs 25 per pop!

E.g. for almost all races, Helium are best science planet despite having way less pop than ocean/arctic/barren.



Not that terraforming has a huge impact on game outcomes...